I spent 3 hours at Pinball Wizard in Pelham, NH for my birthday with just $20 of tokens. That arcade has just about every machine I could ever want; Revolution X, Donkey Kong, Deal or No Deal, some Sailor Moon beat 'em up, Virtual On, a million fighting games, a Super Nintendo cabinet (?!), and a shitload of Pinball to boot (Adams Family, Monopoly, Terminator, a gigantic Atari Superman pinball cabinet).

Also, I started replaying Mischief Makers, because it might be my favorite platformer next to Mario World. Not counting the dated-as-fuck graphics, I personally think it's perfect.

The PSX controls for it are driving me insane, I keep pressing square when I want to shoot and accidentally jumping on top of the tiger that's trying to maul me, and I keep pressing O when I want to pick stuff up and rolling past it. One time there was an item right in front of a death trap and I pressed O to pick it up and rolled right into a pair of fucking Last Crusade sawblades D:

It gives you the option of switching up the controls but you can't actually customize them, and all of the alternatives either don't change the face buttons or are fucking stupid. Other than that it's a real nostalgia trip though, I loved Tomb Raider as a young'un even when it was traumatizing the shit out of me.

Yeah, old school TR was cool. Its been a long time since a game had me slowly creeping around corners looking for tigers or bears that were actually a threat. Man, you make me want to dig up an old copy somewhere.

Lately I've been playing Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams. It's a solid enough games. However, the final boss has been a major pain. I don't wish to deal with unnecessary frustrations like that anymore, so I gave up on trying to beat it.

It's like this ultra-bleak mashup of Children of Men, The Walking Dead and The Road by way of some unholy Resident Evil 4 / Manhunt bastard child. It does a thing I really like where it makes small numbers of enemies (like 3 or 4) a serious threat, and with bigger groups of like 10 that you'd thoughtlessly mow down in another game you really have to be stealthy and pick at them because you simply don't have the resources to deal with them all in a straight firefight.

Even when you're going around blowing heads off the firefights are really slow and methodical; the aiming cursor is slow and heavy, guns take a long time to fire and reload, and they hit like trucks both to you and the NPCs so when a motherfucker gets shot it actually feels like it carries some weight, not bullshit like Gears of War or Uncharted where you can absorb like 50 bullets every 5 minutes with no kind of problem. Actually when Joel gets shot he stumbles backwards for a second and blood flies off him towards the screen, which in addition to looking cool makes you feel like "I just got fucking shot, ow"

The physics engine is a bit fucked though and the friendly AI is the kind of goofy thing that people could make fun of for the next decade, but that shit doesn't matter because everything else about the game just feels fucking great; I can't remember the last time just shooting motherfuckers felt this satisfying, it probably was in RE4 now that I think about it. Last of Us also must have cost like a billion dollars because it looks fucking baller and it's super-detailed. It's so good, go get it.

Never played this before. It was weird and amazing. I still feel weird. It was like watching someone else's dream and I loved every minute of it. Not much replay value, I guess, but still. Very memorable moment in my gaming history.

I didn't like Last of Us. Graphics were phenomenal and the story was alright, but the combat just felt very shallow, and all you do between fights is highlight items and hammer triangle, or slide ladders around.

Also, the difficulty's backwards. The first few encounters are crazy hard, then it just gets easier and easier until you're massacring everyone in the hotel without breaking a sweat. Then it gets even easier. And the last few fights in the game are a fucking joke. The only time it got hard again was the first half of the Winter chapter because you're back to having almost no items again.

Borderlands 2, yeah this shit is about a year old already but what the hell. I really wanted to like the first one but just couldn't. This one seams to do what the first one wouldn't for me, for whatever reason.

Biggest problem with Borderlands is the guns feel inconsequential and disposable even the ones you like, because you will invariably find one that handles and feels exactly the same but with a better stat value. I wish it had a non level based method of balancing usefulness of firearms. So that a crude dumpy revolver you've had since lvl 1 was still able to kill things later on but still is outshined by some absurdity that fires acid flechettes out of a sub machinegun.

I didn't like Last of Us. Graphics were phenomenal and the story was alright, but the combat just felt very shallow, and all you do between fights is highlight items and hammer triangle, or slide ladders around.

Also, the difficulty's backwards. The first few encounters are crazy hard, then it just gets easier and easier until you're massacring everyone in the hotel without breaking a sweat. Then it gets even easier. And the last few fights in the game are a fucking joke. The only time it got hard again was the first half of the Winter chapter because you're back to having almost no items again.

I agree with just about everything here. However, I still really liked the game.

The last few encounters are a serious joke. I can deal with no boss battle at the end, lots of games do that. They could have made the last few encounters timed to add some challenge but they didnt. Lots of the encounters is the game have guys you can sneak past but usually its best to take them out before engaging the next group. I think in the final encounters there were very few guys you just had to take out.

Not to mention, I never really felt like I didnt have the supplies I needed. If you just put in a little effort to sneak around and take out a few guys by choking them out, you always had plenty to take out the rest. Any time you actually come close to going empty is after a big fight and you get to loot everyone and get plenty stocked up.

Spoilers!

And what is up with her being all "Im still waiting for my turn to die" at the end?! I know its really "hey Joel, you fucked up and made the wrong choice" but I still think it was dumb.

Again, still loved the game though and multiplayer is sweet. I love how stealthy it makes you be. I have yet to see anyone do a good job with doing a run and gun.

Oh god, I've never played a game I hate more than Beyond Two Souls. It's worse than Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy combined. The entire thing is literally just so David Cage could watch his celebrity crush/stalking target play the victim in his creepy white knight rape rescue fantasies, and so he could make two - not one, but two - completely anatomically correct naked 3D models of her for his personal spank-bank. Jesus Christ. Ellen Page fucking better sue over this game, she has every right in the world. Fuck, I only played the goddamn thing and even I feel like filing a fucking lawsuit.

The worst thing about that game though was that at the very end, after all the credits, it shows you a dedication.